City council voted recently to reinstate a public-shaming program aimed at irresponsible landlords.

The new law requires the city’s Bureau of Building Inspection to identify the 10 most dilapidated structures and the Department of Public Works to put up signs with the owners’ names, addresses and phone numbers.

Crows once again are congregating atop Park City Center, and mall owners might again haul out the heavy cannons to shoo them away.

But with concerns about anything resembling gunshots emanating from a shopping mall in the wake of recent mass shootings, the cannons will be fired at dusk, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. only. The cannons were shot from 3 to 7 p.m. last year.

General Growth Properties, the owning and managing company of Park City Center, said it is implementing a number of efforts to deter the crows.

Editor’s note: This made the Mercury’s 2012 Top Stories list…always good to keep the shenanigans in Pottstown on our minds! Be vigilant!

POTTSTOWN, PA — The state agency which oversees code and inspection functions in Pennsylvania has issued a “formal warning” to the Pottstown Codes office for a number of violations, including allowing inspections to be conducted by personnel not certified to perform those inspections.

The letter outlines eight complaints regarding inspections at both commercial and residential properties, ranging from Pottstown Memorial Hospital, to the Salvation Army to four residential properties.

Issues ranged from inspectors conducting “plan reviews” and inspections without the proper certification; to no records of reviews or certain inspections being conducted at all; to missing dates in inspection reports.